Transfer of data for myriad reasons is essential and ubiquitous in today's environment. Yet, the security and privacy of data as it is transferred from one source to another is critical, particularly depending upon the nature of the data or if it is transferred over the internet. In some instances, the data may be highly sensitive, for example, as in patient medical records. As another example, in facilitating the handling of transactions, business entities frequently transmit business transaction data electronically in a strict format over common communications networks. The electronic data interchange (EDI) is one of the ways. In EDI, business data is formatted according to one or more known and approved standards, such as ANSI X12 or EDIFACT. For example, the EDI data representing various transactions are transmitted as a batch of delineated documents, and each of the delineated documents is encoded according to strict formatting rules to ensure the destination application receiving the documents is able to successfully parse and consume the information for down-stream processing. In parsing and processing the EDI messages, existing systems transmit EDI data and include the formatting rules or schemas (structure of file) in each delineated document during the interchange.
In some instances, such types of sensitive data are generally transferred through a plurality of sources to reach its final destination. To perform secure transfer of data, while maintaining its privacy, various schemes to encrypt, authenticate, or otherwise maintain the anonymity of the data are employed. This is especially in instances there the data transfer is performed over the internet or public networks.
Some ways to secure privacy of data is to produce randomized data or encrypt data, while preserving the file structure. This is beneficial in situations where customers have data that they do not want to share with others. For example, in addition to the EDI example, in the health-care industry, customer data is often transferred among sources, for example, from one health-care provider to another. With such transfers it is important to keep the order of the data the same, while maintaining the privacy of the data or at least a subset or portion of the data.